The best way of obtaining quality inbound links is generating lots of high-value content that people would like to link to. You gather inbound links when other webmasters and online publishers link to your website, or one of your pages. The greater number of links that you can get, the better it is for your web site and the better you are likely to rank in the search engine rankings.

Inbound links not only get you targeted traffic from the websites linking to you, even search engines attach higher importance to websites that are being linked to by other websites: it acts like a vote of confidence for your content. Valid inbound links can significantly increase your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

The process of generating content for the sake of getting inbound links is generally referred to "linkbaiting".

But does linkbaiting imply that you generate content just to obtain inbound links? No. Actually everything works in tandem and although linkbaiting is a relatively new term, the concept has been there for more than a decade although prior to this it existed in a crooked form. Do not forget link-exchange programs? It was the same thing but back then (they still do) they used to exchange links indiscriminately. Nobody was worried about the link value provided, just so long as a reciprocal link was gained, almost every sort of link was welcome.

There was so much mayhem that it eventually led search engines to stop ignoring link exchange activities and considering only those links that were linked to high-value content. This created the need for unique link-worthy content. This content not only ads value to your website and hence, improve your conversion rate, it also encourages the others to link to your web pages. This linking, originating out of the value of your content, greatly improves your search engine rankings.

If people don't know you, how are they going to first, come to your blog/website, and then link to your content? Be an active participant on other blogs/websites and be helpful. The more people you can draw to your blog/website, the better is the chance of them linking to your content. Make sure you don't spam the communities and when leaving messages and comments if you can use your link (including keywords), all the better.

Approach people directly

Write an email to more famous bloggers and website publishers in your niche informing them of what you have written. If it interests them and can prove relevant to their visitors they'll certainly link to you. But don't nag them and don't send them more than two emails (in case they missed the first one). Be selective, and only write to them if you really think your link can be useful to their visitors.

Create search engine friendly content

The search engines are a sure-shot way of getting highly targeted traffic if you optimize your posts well. Use the right headings, use proper anchor text and all the legitimate SEO tactics you can think of to draw maximum mileage from the search engine traffic.

There could be countless ways to promote your linkbait content, but these are the most important ones and you can start working on them from day one.

The full article on linkbaiting at doublespark-seo.co.uk further explains to you how you can leverage linkbaiting to tremendously increase your traffic and improve your search engine traffic. The article also explains what makes your linkbait content effective and what sort of content people generally like to read and then link to.

Author: Gary Mattoc Peterborough SEO

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According to a recent press release:

"Search engine marketing firm iProspect today released the iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study. Sponsored by iProspect and conducted by JupiterResearch, the study reveals that 67% of the online search population is driven to search by offline channels. It also revealed that 39% of online searchers who are influenced by offline channels ultimately make a purchase."

It also says:

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There is so much misinformation floating through the internet regarding search engine marketing and optimization that it’s important to shed some light on a few common errors and misconceptions. The following list highlights some of the most critical issues involved in determining the success or failure of a web site’s search engine optimization and marketing strategies.

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The first website I created (in 2003) is about job interview strategies.

It’s ranked Number 1 in Google for the keyword phrase “job interview strategies.”

Isn’t that great?

No. Other than some bragging rights, this accomplishment is virtually worthless to me.

Why? Because no one is searching for that keyword phrase!

It’s like having the best steak for sale at a vegetarian convention.

What keyword phrase is my target audience searching for? “Job interview.” More than 18,500 searches per month!

But there’s also a lot of competition. When you search Google for that keyword phrase, it finds more than 2 million matches!

My site is ranked Number 30.

Which would you rather have—the Number 1 spot for a phrase no one searches for, or the Number 30 spot for a highly searched phrase?

This is just one example of how a lower Google rank can be far better than a higher one. Successful ranking depends on the keyword phrase and the number of searches for that phrase.

When doing your initial research, first find the keyword phrases for your niche that people are actually searching for—not phrases you think would be good. I recommend using the free Bulk Keyword Research Tool at itarget.info.

When I began designing my job interview site, “job interview strategies” seemed like a great phrase. It isn’t. If I’d done better research, I would’ve known this from the beginning.

My job interview site is not a blog, but it is an authority site. It took me years to achieve a decent ranking for a good search phrase. With today's tools (blogs, social networking, The Authority Black Book, etc.) you can get there much quicker.

Just make sure the keyword phrase you’re focusing on is worthwhile!

Tip: While you’re waiting for your site to climb in the rankings, be sure to write and market articles for your niche. In the early stages of my site development, several of my articles were published on websites with much higher rankings (and far more traffic) than mine. I’ve no doubt the backlinks from those authority sites, and the visitors they generated, helped my interview site to achieve success.

According to a recent study sponsored by iProspect and conducted by Jupiter Research, about 25% of 2,000 people surveyed said they regularly visit social networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube.

Even more interesting for us online marketers, a third of them revealed that social networking sites influence their buying decisions.

In a press release about the study, iProspect President Robert Murray said:

"Sure, everyone knows that people are going to social networking sites, but this study demonstrates - unequivocally - that social networking sites are not just a cultural fad. We're talking about a potent marketing channel. In the end, that could translate into a lot of potential revenue or lost opportunity. If you're an online marketer and you haven't assessed the value of social networking sites, it's time you 'got religion'."

But that doesn't mean social networking sites are replacing traditional search engines… not by a long shot.

"While social networking sites are a growing and important online channel for marketers to leverage, they are still early stage," noted Murray. "When it comes to quantity and frequency of visits, these sites are not even in the same ballpark as the major search engines. Even MySpace — the most popular of the social networking sites included in this study - is dwarfed by the likes of Google or Yahoo!. Smart marketers will explore social networks, yet continue to invest in being found in the major search engines. The sheer numbers dictate as much."

The best thing you can do as an online marketer is employ a strategy that takes advantage of both social networking and search engine optimization–a very powerful combination that can have a tremendous impact on your bottom line!

To find out more about the study (which I recommend), go read the entire press release.

According to a recent post by blogger Gary Lee, a great way to boost both rankings and traffic is to start a Technorati Faves Exchange with readers.

Gary got the idea from a very detailed and helpful article by Maki over at Dosh Dosh.

After reading both posts (as I suggest you do), I decided to jump into this myself.

The idea is to add the participating blogs to your list of Technorati Favorites, get some of them to return the favor, and all share the potential benefits of increased exposure and traffic.

So, to continue the promotion of DoshDosh’s exchange, perpetuated by Gary's post, this is how it works:

1. Click here to Add Me to your Technorati Favorites

2. Leave a comment that you have added me. Use your own Technorati Fave link in the comment so I know where to go (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.yourdomain.com).

3. I will go through my comments and then add you to my Technorati Favorites list as well.

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction about how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can be accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

3) Take “My New Faves” and move them into the “The Original Faves” list.

4) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Technorati Favorites to the “My New Faves” section. Remember to also add the “Fave the Site” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.yourfavesdomain.com)

5) Add everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on “Fave the Site.” Those who want good kharma will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

My New Faves

Chris Garrett on New Media - Fave the Site

Finding the Money - Fave the Site

The Friday Traffic Report - Fave the Site

Original Faves

Stephen Fung - Fave the Site Add him to your favorites and he'll donate to charity!
Ed Lau - Fave the Site
QMusings - Fave the Site

Gary Lee - Fave the Site
Dosh Dosh - Fave the Site
Nate Whitehill - Fave the Site
Ms. Danielle - Fave the Site
Jeff Kee - Fave the Site
Scribble on the Wall - Fave the Site
Jimi Morrisons Head - Fave the Site
Jon Lee - Fave the Site
Samanathon - Fave the Site
Eat Drink & Be Merry - Fave the Site
The Man of Silver - Fave the Site
Hannes Johnson - Fave the Site
My Dandelion Patch - Fave the Site
Nathan Drach - Fave the Site
SiteLogic - Fave the Site
Julies Journal - Fave the Site

That's it! Hopefully this little exchange will give everyone participating a bit of exposure via Technorati, and maybe even some extra traffic.

I first read about the Z-List in this post at DoshDosh: Need Free Blog Traffic and Links? Try the Z-List.

In his post, Maki says:

The Z list is a blog meme, which sees bloggers creating and sharing a list of many links to blogs in a single post. Participants joining the Z list meme will have to copy and paste a list of blogs, while including any new blogs on the list that they feel should get the exposure they deserve.

Then he mentioned some of the benefits:

* You’ll help the blogs you like get some much needed exposure
* You’ll get to discover new blogs
* You’ll get a higher Technorati ranking. (Ironic but true)
* You’ll get new readers and potential RSS subscribers
* You’ll most likely increase your blog’s Google Page Rank
* You’ll get some incoming links and traffic
* You’ll get to meet and correspond with bloggers from all over the world

I have to admit, this sounded too good to be true. So I did additional research before jumping into this Z-List thing.

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If you've been involved with blogging or online marketing for a while, you've probably heard lots of SEO terms tossed around.

You probably know the meanings of these:

Above the Fold
Anchor Text
Backlinks
Linkbait
Keyword
CAPTCHA

But did you CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart?" I had no idea!

Do you know what these mean–as related to SEO?

Flog
Hilltop
Stemming
Slurp
Minus 30 Penalty

Well, you're in luck. If you want to be able to follow online discussions of the search engine experts (or pretend you're one yourself), your first stop should be this page:

It tells you the meaning of hundreds of words, phrases, acronyms and other SEO jargon.

Ah, enlightenment!

Now when someone tells you to put doorway passages on your site to get more traffic, you can tell them to take a hike because you'll know what they're talking about, and that it's a stupid idea!

Apogee Search is one of the 25 largest Search Engine Marketing firms in the world, so I think we can trust their SEO definitions to be accurate.

If you have an adequate budget, you can hire them to help you with your PPC campaign!

(You do know what PPC means, right?)

This is an interesting and informative video by WebProNews that explains link baiting and other linking strategies.

Here's the description of the video:

Few can speak about link building and link baiting with the experience and authority that Eric Ward brings to the table. He’s been doing this sort of thing since 1994, before the vast majority had even heard of a hyperlink.

In this WebProNews: The Insider video, Managing Editor Mike McDonald connects with Ward via webcam to discuss the finer points of link building today, what constitutes good link bait, and creating a good balance of organic and paid links.

What is linkbait? Linkbait can be anything – anything that inspires somebody at another website or blog to link back to it. The only boundary is creativity.

What makes something linkable? We can only speak with examples and general guidance, but–whatever it is, it should be clever and useful to the end-user, either by “interestingness” or by its ability to solve a problem. Widgets, then, make sense as great linkbait. Good linkbait is pure, not coming off as slimy or cheesy. “In the long run,” says Ward, “the end user votes with the mouse.”

How do you develop a linking strategy? Strategies should mesh with the intent and market of the website being promoted. Any link is not necessarily a good link. Quality links matter. The right audience matters. Timing is important. If you want to promote something for next week, organic SEO isn’t going to work. You may need to buy some links or bid on some keywords. Use organic SEO for promotions far in the future (if for the Christmas season, begin in September). There is no optimal balance of paid and organic links. It depends on what the end goal is.

Get the content in front of the audience you care about.

The video's about 12 minutes long.

Enjoy!

Alex at Blog About Money Online has written a great article that explains how to use anchor text links to boost your blog's search engine rankings.

Here's a tip he provides about using non-competive keywords:

"If you don’t want to go through weeks or months of optimization for highly searched phrases, you should consider an alternative. You could get high search listing for a less searched phrase. People don’t optimize for those phrases, so that allows you to catch a top search position with little optimization. It won’t be much, but you’ll see an increase in your traffic afterwards."

I must admit I haven't done as much as I should to incorporate great SEO tactics like this on my blog. Time to get busy!

Check out Alex's entire article here: Instant SEO With Anchor Text

Is SEO a waste of your time and money?

"Yes!" says one web expert.

Anthony Fallon, CEO of Warrington Web Works, a UK web publishing company, claimed this week that search engine optimization (SEO) is a waste of time and money for businesses.

In a February 27th press release, Anthony says that using the latest distribution technologies (like RSS), writing quality content, and taking advantage of vast improvement in search engine technology make SEO unnecessary.

"Web 2.0 it’s all about your visitor", Anthony added. "The new distribution technologies like RSS will get your message out there without any magic or manipulation of search results. The quality of Google’s Search technology is really coming on in leaps and bounds. If businesses can get in front of their customers without stuffing their content with keywords, it has to be a good thing. As for the SEO Industry, good riddance I say."

In order to prove his point, Anthony wrote an article, "SEO Mind Crime," posted it on Wednesday and told his readers to search for "SEO Mind Crime" on Google over the coming days. Within 24 hours, the article appeared at positions 3, 4 and 6 on Google's first page (out of 826,000 indexed pages).

According to Anthony, this isthe ultimate proof that SEO is no longer required in our Web 2.0 world.

I'm not so sure.

Anthony's test may have worked for an obscure phrase like "SEO Mind Crime" (I doubt ANYONE would normally search for that phrase without being specifically asked to do so), but we need results from "real" visitors searching for "real" keyword phrases.

What good does it to to be ranked high in search engine results for phrases people aren't using?

The REAL test is whether non-SEO tactics like those Anthony promotes can be as successful as SEO with commonly used keywords and search phrases our target audiences are likely to use.

That being said, I totally agree with Anthony that we need to put most of our emphasis on non-SEO tactics such as: (1) providing quality content, (2) using technologies like RSS and user-friendly media like video, (3) promoting and marketing our sites through social networking and bookmarking services, and other Web 2.0 tools.

But I do not believe that SEO is completely worthless. Sorry, Anthony!

Here's the link to the press release: Search Engine Optimisation A Waste of Time and Money

Are you a music fan? If so, you might want to check out SearchWinMerch.com, a new web search engine with an interesting twist: every search offers a chance to win stuff — concert tickets, official band merchandise, autographs and more.

When I read the Press Release on this new service, two questions came to mind:

(1) Will niche-specific search engines become more popular as the Web 2.0 crowd gets bored or impatient with "old-fashioned" and huge seach engines?

(2) Is "bribery" (the chance to win stuff) a smart strategy for getting people to try a new service?

I think the answer to number (1) is yes. Niche-specific search engines are already growing in popularity. The Online Education Database has posted an article listing their opinion of the Top 25 Web 2.0 Search Engines.

While all of them are not really niche-specific, they do show this trend: what we tend to think of as a "typical search engine" is quickly evolving into a tool that is more personal, more targeted and helpful to its users.

As for the answer to question (2) above, I think only time will tell. If SearchWinMerch.com becomes a big hit, we'll have our answer.

Aaron Wall of SEOBook makes a compelling case for quality writing in a recent post, If People Hate Your Writing Google Hates Your Website.

Here are a couple of the excellent points he makes:

More and more people are reading and writing online. As the amount of content increases the value of strong filters goes up. Thus if you have content that you can pitch to them it will spread virally. I recently created one good article for a client, pitched it to 3 websites, and it got well over 100 organic citations in the first week.

… and…

After you have strong baseline knowledge of the topic, general writing principals, and know how to package information then the packaging is the only difference between profitable and and unprofitable content.

He also offers some great tips on information packaging.

Read Aarons entire post by clicking here: If People Hate Your Writing Google Hates Your Website.

One-Way Inbound Links to Your Site are Gold!

Search engines place more value on one-way inbound links than reciprocal links (where you and another webmaster swap links to each other's sites) because they see them as genuine, unbiased recommendations of your site.

Here are a few ways to obtain quality inbound links to your site:

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Jill Whalen of HighRankingsAdvisor.com recently wrote a great article entitled "10 Signs that your SEO is a Quack."

While her article addresses hiring so-called professional search engine optimization (SEO) experts, several of the points she makes should be carefully studied by YOU if you have a web site.

Here are a few great examples:

"In regards to PageRank, increasing the little green bar graph’s number should never be the ultimate goal of a professional SEO campaign. A good campaign will automatically increase your real and true PageRank (as measured by Google) without your specifically setting out to increasing it on your own. Since PR doesn’t bring you traffic and sales (nor rankings), increasing it should not ever be the main goal of your campaign…

"SEO isn’t all about links. It isn't all about content. It isn't all about anything. It’s about lots of things all added together to make the perfect combination for your site. A linking campaign alone will never be as effective if you neglect your on-page content, and vice versa…

"Your SEO company is almost surely 99% quackish if they tell you that they can rank your brand-new site in Google for keywords that will bring you traffic within a few months. In fact, if they claim they can do it in less than 9 months, they’re either inexperienced or lying. Google has an aging delay that is most certainly related to the age of the site, as well as a certain trust factor. It is only the very rare and wonderful site that can get around this delay. But if your site is like most, you’re going to have to look to the long term for your Google results, regardless of what the quacks might try to convince you of."

I'm sure that last one will shake a few folks up!

I'll be the first to admit I am not an SEO expert. Heck, I can barely spell SEO! But Jill is widely known as one of the best SEO experts on the planet, so I tend to believe what she says. Maybe you should, too.

Read her entire article here: "10 Signs that your SEO is a Quack."